Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit

Led by Associate Professor Janneke Berecki-Gisolf, the Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit (VISU) has been analysing, interpreting and disseminating Victorian data on injury deaths, hospital admissions and emergency department presentations across the state, nationally and internationally for more than 25 years.

VISU’s Injury surveillance data are recorded on three datasets:

  • Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, Department of Justice Cause of Death Unit Record File (COD URF-Deaths)
  • Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (VAED: hospital admissions), and
  • Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset (VEMD: Emergency Department presentations); VAED and VEMD provided by the Victorian Department of Health

VISU extracts and analyses injury surveillance data, providing critical insights to organisations including all levels of government, health bodies, researchers, industry, and the media. This data underpins government policy and stimulates research to develop and evaluate prevention strategies. These outcomes include community education, legislative reform, and safety improvements in environmental and product design.

Hazard magazine
Hazard is a publication produced by VISU since 1988. A cornerstone of the team’s work, it explores major and emerging issues in injury prevention. Hazard presents data on injury causes, severity, trends and risk factors, complemented by expert commentary and evidence-based prevention recommendations. In 2025, Hazard Edition 94 was published, investigating unintentional injuries among Victorian women across the adult lifespan.

Impact

The team’s impact in 2025 continues with strong and consistent media interest and coverage, primarily reactive in both national and state media, receiving a reach of 82.4m over the year. Hazard 93 on e-micromobility was referenced numerous times in a report from the WA government into an inquiry on electric mobility device safety, released in December.

Major projects

In 2025, the team released two e-bulletins, focusing on cause of death and hospital admissions. Drafting commenced for the 2026 e-bulletin, and the team is working toward an interactive web report version of the e-bulletins. The team has contributed to emergency department injury data quality feedback reports, and has prepared these for up to 41 public hospital campuses statewide, and a new narrative data quality methodology was developed.

The team contributes to knowledge exchange through attendance and presentations, including the Rural and Remote Health Science Scientific Symposium, regular presentations at the VISU - Victorian Department of Health Advisory Committee, at the Royal Children’s Hospital Grant Round, and participate in national and cross-jurisdictional injury prevention and surveillance expert groups and advisory committees.

Funding partners

Funded by the Victorian Government Department of Health, the team continues to deliver high-quality, impactful research that shapes injury prevention efforts in Victoria and beyond. Additional injury prevention stakeholders, partners and data requesting organisations include Worksafe Victoria, Victoria Police, Energy Safe Victoria, Agriculture Victoria, the Department of Transport and Planning, Consumer Affairs Victoria and the Coroner’s Court.

The Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit skills and expertise includes biostatistics, epidemiology, medicine, psychology, and abundant hands-on experience and expertise related to the ICD-10-AM, statistical software including STATA, SAS and SPSS syntax, data management and health data analysis and interpretation. Team members hold advisory and executive committee positions including Worksafe Agricultural Safety Reference Group, Safety Standards Australia, National Injury Surveillance Advisory Committee, Cross Jurisdictional Injury Group, ACCC Product Safety Consultative Committee, and Associate Professor Berecki-Gisolf holds the Secretary role in the AIPN Executive Committee.